Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing

The ECL was busy at UbiComp 2015! Maia presented at the DC, James presented the paper "No Longer Wearing: Investigating the Abandonment of Personal Health-Tracking Technologies on Craigslist". This paper was co-authored by Jessica Pater (Ga Tech), Dr. Andrew Miller (Univ. of Washington), Dr. Beth Mynatt (Ga Tech), and Dr. Lena Mamykina (Columbia).
Abstract: Personal health-tracking technologies have become a part of mainstream culture. Their growing popularity and widespread adoption present an opportunity for the design of new interventions to improve wellness and health. However, there is an increasing concern that these technologies are failing to inspire long-term adoption. In order to understand why users abandon personal health-tracking technologies, we analyzed advertisements of secondary sales of such technologies on Craigslist. We conducted iterative inductive and deductive analyses of approximately 1600 advertisements of personal health-tracking technologies posted over the course of one month across the US. We identify health motivations and rationales for abandonment and present a set of design implications. We call for improved theories that help translate between existing theories designed to explain psychological effects of health behavior change and the technologies that help people make those changes.

Designing a personal, adaptive tool is the goal of the latest phase of MyJourney Compass project by the Everyday Computing Lab. The program recently received a $1.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to design the next generation of the tablets. Over the next four years, Georgia Tech researchers will continue prototyping and testing tablets that can anticipate a patient's needs and prepare them for things like surgery and chemotherapy.
“The question for us is, how would you design a computer that would adapt or change as the person progresses through different phases of their journey?” says Beth Mynatt, principal investigator for the project.
The Everyday Computing Lab will partner with healthcare providers in North Georgia to implement and evaluate such an adaptible technology for breast cancer patients.
Healthcare providers are excited about the program. “They have a better sense of what their patients are struggling with,” says Mynatt. “If we can give a more realistic portrayal of what the patients are going through, then they can tailor the care or pay attention to those barriers or problems.”

On Wednesday November 5, 2014 lab members Jessica Pater and Maia Jacobs, along with four other students (Casey Fiesler, Miranda Parker, Catherine Grevet, and Kayla Desportes), took 1st place at the GT Convergence Innovation Competition in the Social Impact category. Their application, the Sexual Assault Transparence @ Georgia Tech (SAT@GT) app focused on creating a space for GT students and faculty to anonymously discuss instances of sexual assault on campus. The CDC estimates that 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted while at college. For Georgia Tech, this equates to roughly 342 students for 2013, yet only 18 instances were officially reported. Why is there such a discrepancy? Why aren't GT women reporting sexual assault? SAT@GT, while not an official reporting tool, was developed in an effort to "close this gap" through allowing anonymous accounts sexual assault for both the student body. Developed in collaboration with the GT Women's Resource Center, the app will also collect high-level data for the Center to better direct campus resources. With the 1st place win, the team will now work with GT RNOC to further develop the SAT@GT app and get it ready for public release in Spring of 2015!
Check out the video for the submission!

Beth Mynatt chaired a Trans-NIH Interagency workshop on the future research agenda for Aging in Place technologies. More than 80 researchers and government officials attended the workshop held on the NIH campus. Other Georgia Tech attendees included Wendy Rogers, Jon Sanford, and Brian Jones.
For more details, click on http://www.cra.org/ccc/visioning/visioning-activities/aging-in-place/411...